Slavery in Late Prehistoric Europe: Recovering the Evidence for Social Structure in Iron Age Society

1988 ◽  
pp. 179-192 ◽  
Author(s):  
Bettina Arnold
Keyword(s):  
Social Structure ◽  
Iron Age ◽  
Late Prehistoric

scholarly journals Human and Steppe in the Early Iron Age. Results of Interdisciplinary Research

2021 ◽  
pp. 6-30
Author(s):  
Mikhail Krivosheev ◽  
◽  
Evgeniy Pererva ◽  
Maksim Eltsov ◽  
◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Social Structure ◽  
Iron Age ◽  
Natural Science ◽  
Climatic Changes ◽  
Archaeological Sites ◽  
Early Iron Age ◽  
Strong Impact ◽  
Mode Of Life ◽  
Archaeological Cultures ◽  
Science Disciplines

Introduction. Recent archaeological studies deal with the integration of natural science disciplines. Such scientific interaction includes the reconstruction of climatic changes, human adaptation to the changing conditions of nature, study of sociocultural specifics in nomadic groups as well as rising archaeological cultures, with emphasis on the interconnection between the fluctuations of steppe environmental conditions and steppe populations. Analysis. The article presents the results of the carried out interdisciplinary analysis of classic and modern archaeological studies and natural science disciplines. This allows evaluating the specifics of different factors (paleoclimatic, sociocultural, etc.) influencing the “steppe-human” system in a new way. Such factors as registered climatic changes, spreading areas of archaeological cultures, mortuary funeral rites, results of paleoanthropological examination, written records and ethnographic data provide evidence to reconstructing different time-span events of early nomads’ history in one context. The reconstruction of historical reality shows quite strong correlation between the environment and specific features in the development of ancient steppe societies. Human has high adaptive abilities to changing factors. However, the steppe population mode of life is extremely conservative and it has practically never changed during the Sarmatian or Sauromatian history. Climate fluctuations over the steppe area influenced the demographic and social structure of nomadic society. During auspicious periods, nomadic communities became populous and active politically and military. If negative factors dominated, the population tended to decrease and the social structure tended to simplify. Critical indicators of aridization and humidization in Eurasian steppes are followed with the population outflow, which is evidenced by small amount of archaeological sites or even by vanishing of cultures. Results. Thus, the authors conclude that when studying archaeological sites of the Early Iron Age nomadic cultures, it is necessary to consider the steppe and human as a single organism responsive to changing and a strong impact of environmental and socio-cultural factors.

New Media in the Late Iron Age

2012 ◽  
Author(s):  
Peter S. Wells
Keyword(s):  
New Media ◽  
Iron Age ◽  
Developmental Trajectory ◽  
Third Century ◽  
Late Prehistoric ◽  
Late Iron Age ◽  
Mediterranean World ◽  
Temperate Europe ◽  
The Mediterranean ◽  
Middle Iron Age

This chapter analyzes coins and writing in late prehistoric Europe. The development of coinage in temperate Europe and the first regular signs of writing are innovations that share some important features. Both were introduced from outside the region, specifically from the Mediterranean world, toward the end of the Middle Iron Age. Although both had existed in the Mediterranean world for centuries before their introduction and adoption in temperate Europe, both appear in temperate Europe at about the same time, during the third century BC and more abundantly during the second and first centuries. They were both adopted at a particular time in Europe's developmental trajectory, and under specific economic and political circumstances.

Hierarchical or Egalitarian?

2019 ◽  
pp. 144-164
Author(s):  
D. W. Harding
Keyword(s):  
Social Development ◽  
Social Structure ◽  
Social Status ◽  
Iron Age ◽  
Social Complexity ◽  
Social Inequalities ◽  
Social Hierarchy ◽  
Historic Archaeology ◽  
Economic Competition ◽  
Grave Goods

The model of social structure in British prehistory still owes much to the legacy of Gordon Childe, for whom economic competition was the catalyst of social inequalities. Even from the Neolithic, however, control of land or stock would have conveyed status, and the construction of major works such as tombs or henges implies authority over labour and resources, even if it was religious rather than temporal. Classical sources indicated that late pre-Roman Iron Age society was stratified, but recent opinion has questioned how far back this extended into earlier prehistory. Using grave goods as a proxy for social status may be simplistic, though whether explained as possessions of the dead, debts repaid by dependents, dedications to deities or ancestors, or displays of communal wealth consumption, they surely indicate social complexity. Settlements in British prehistory or early historic archaeology seldom display clear evidence of social hierarchy, since social status was evidently not expressed in the same terms as in contemporary materialistic and capitalistic societies. Anthropological models of social development from simple communities to chiefdoms and state societies can now be seen as neither consistent nor uniform in progression.

scholarly journals Etruscan Foodways and Demographic Demands: Contextualizing Protohistoric Livestock Husbandry in Northern Italy

2016 ◽  
Vol 19 (2) ◽  
pp. 279-315 ◽  
Author(s):  
Angela Trentacoste
Keyword(s):  
Iron Age ◽  
Cultural Context ◽  
Central Italy ◽  
Late Prehistoric ◽  
Secondary Products ◽  
Po Valley ◽  
Animal Management ◽  
Domestic Livestock ◽  
First Millennium ◽  
First Time

Domestic livestock were a crucial part of Mediterranean communities throughout later prehistory. In the first millennium BC, livestock mangement changed, and was changed by, the rise of cities in Italy. Italian prehistory has a rich zooarchaeological tradition, but investigation of the Iron Age has been regionally divided and synthetic works on the Po valley comparatively few. This article presents a pan-regional review of late prehistoric and protohistoric livestock exploitation that considers Northern and Central Italy together for the first time. Zooarchaeological comparison reveals an increase in the use of sheep/goat for secondary products, while cattle and caprines were subject to size changes that distinguish their management from that of pigs. A marked increase in pig husbandry is visible in both regions, but this shift took place earlier and more emphatically in Northern Etruscan centres than in Central Italy. After defining the main changes in animal management during the period under review, this article looks beyond population density to explore the wider environmental, economic, and cultural context of pork consumption and its relation to the development of urbanism in Etruria padana.

Generations of aristocracy

2002 ◽  
Vol 9 (1) ◽  
pp. 2-15 ◽  
Author(s):  
Greg Woolf
Keyword(s):  
Material Culture ◽  
Social Structure ◽  
Iron Age ◽  
Social Power ◽  
Roman Period ◽  
Social Hierarchies ◽  
Continuity And Change ◽  
Roman Imperialism ◽  
Late Iron Age ◽  
The Social

AbstractThis paper sets out to examine issues of continuity and change in the social hierarchies of the peoples of the Gallic interior, between the late Iron Age and the early Roman period. This part of the empire is one in which we might reasonably expect to find substantial continuity of social structure. Many scholars have argued that this is indeed the case, notwithstanding the evident changes in material culture. This paper argues that the opposite was true. Apparent similarities, I suggest, reinforced by the ways we have studied provincial cultures, have masked dramatic changes in the basis of social power. That conclusion has implications for other provincial societies, and for Roman imperialism in general.

The Excavation of A Red Hill at Peldon, Essex, With Notes on Some Other Sites

1978 ◽  
Vol 58 (1) ◽  
pp. 31-60 ◽  
Author(s):  
Kay de Brisay
Keyword(s):  
Social Structure ◽  
Iron Age ◽  
Structure And Function ◽  
Economic Factors ◽  
And Function

SummaryThis description of the structure and function of the salt-making site at Peldon, together with comparable evidence from other sites, demonstrates a degree of specialization within Iron Age society with interesting consequences for any view of social structure. The possibility of trade in salt, over and above production for local needs, must also affect our view of the extent to which economic factors could over-ride the basically tribal organization of Britain at this time.

scholarly journals Along the Danube and at the Foothills of the North-Eastern Hungarian Mountains: Some Data on the Distribution of Stone Raw Materials in the Late Iron Age

2020 ◽  
Vol 9 (2) ◽  
pp. 331-342
Author(s):  
Zoltán Czajlik
Keyword(s):  
Iron Age ◽  
Raw Materials ◽  
Future Research ◽  
Systematic Research ◽  
Late Prehistoric ◽  
The North ◽  
Late Iron Age ◽  
Stone Materials ◽  
Geological Features ◽  
North Eastern

Stones as raw materials are important environmental resources often found at prehistoric sites. Since their various types essentially retained their original geological features, it is generally relatively easy to identify their origin. Nevertheless, there is hardly any systematic research on late prehistoric stone raw materials. Furthermore, these materials are mentioned very inconsistently and the geological terms, definitions and analyzes are absent from the discussions. The general picture that we can sketch based on secondary literature is therefore mosaic-like. However, it is by no means impossible to identify extraction sites. Based on on-site experience and using modern analyzes, it is possible, for example, to differentiate between individual types of sandstone and andesite. From the perspective of future research, analyzes of late Iron Age stone materials from well-studied archaeological contexts could contribute to understand better how stones as raw materials were used in late prehistoric periods.

How Ancient Europeans Saw the World

2012 ◽  
Author(s):  
Peter S. Wells
Keyword(s):  
Bronze Age ◽  
Iron Age ◽  
Large Scale ◽  
Scale Production ◽  
Late Prehistoric ◽  
Urban Centers ◽  
Money Economy ◽  
Large Scale Production ◽  
The World ◽  
New Research

The peoples who inhabited Europe during the two millennia before the Roman conquests had established urban centers, large-scale production of goods such as pottery and iron tools, a money economy, and elaborate rituals and ceremonies. Yet as this book argues, the visual world of these late prehistoric communities was profoundly different from those of ancient Rome's literate civilization and today's industrialized societies. Drawing on startling new research in neuroscience and cognitive psychology, the book reconstructs how the peoples of pre-Roman Europe saw the world and their place in it. It sheds new light on how they communicated their thoughts, feelings, and visual perceptions through the everyday tools they shaped, the pottery and metal ornaments they decorated, and the arrangements of objects they made in their ritual places—and how these forms and patterns in turn shaped their experience. The book offers a completely new approach to the study of Bronze Age and Iron Age Europe, and represents a major challenge to existing views about prehistoric cultures. It demonstrates why we cannot interpret the structures that Europe's pre-Roman inhabitants built in the landscape, the ways they arranged their settlements and burial sites, or the complex patterning of their art on the basis of what these things look like to us. Rather, we must view these objects and visual patterns as they were meant to be seen by the ancient peoples who fashioned them.

Sign in / Sign up

Export Citation Format

Share Document